Clearly, there are a *lot* of ties in the peer voting categories. How we could possibly come up with a *fair* system of tie breaking is beyond me.

Just to make sure I did this right, here's how I calculated these median scores: I sorted all the votes by value for each game in each category and chose the middle value. If it had an odd number of votes I just grabbed the center one. If it had an even number of votes, I took the center two and divided by 2.

DavidGuy wrote, "Sorry for the confusion ..."
Not at all. I hadn't realized it worked like that either. I still think it would be good if Carlos could clarify as I think the Laserface picks six times, Maneuv'It picks three times, etc. is a commonly held understanding of the prize system.

Quote:Alright, I crunched the numbers and came up with some data for you all to chew on. Here are the results of the competition that I came up with using just the median score dimension:

This really was unnecessary, but interesting to see nonetheless.

Quote:How we could possibly come up with a *fair* system of tie breaking is beyond me.

This is when you would use the mean of all the categories to determine the winners. I mean it's a tie-breaker, a mean only would make sense. (and would be the average of the medians, which were not nerfed)

Side note: If the interquartile mean was used we probably wouldn't have nearly as many ties, but still supply a decent amount of fairness.

tcIgnatius Wrote:That's not right. The first two follow the special case I had mentioned before, and I can't see why the third one does not deserve a 9.

G1 gets: 5
G2 gets: 5.9
G3 gets: 9 (obviously)

Once again, you've proved my point even with severe nerfing.

There is no nerfing. Those are all *valid* votes. Games can be polarizing. (El Ballo comes to mind)

And what the heck special case are you talking about? I've read your messages 3 times and I see nothing. It seems the "special case" is simply taking the average of the two middle numbers when there's an even number of votes. That's not a special case, it's the definition of the median.

And the fact that there being one extra number changing the entire result of the contest further demonstrates that the median is a poor ranking method.

Also, look again at the numbers I provided. I originally posted 1 extra 10 for G1 and G2. So like I said, with a median G1 would get a 1, G2 would get a 10, and G3 would get a 9. That means G2 would win, which is clearly wrong.

Quote:tcIgnatius, the median of G1 is 10, and the median of G2 is 10. The median AND mean of G3 is obviously 9. You appear to be confused.

Edit: My bad, the median of G1 really is 5.5, but only because of pure chance. If there had been an extra 10 on the right side, the median which would become 10. Like I said, TOTALLY RIDICULOUS.

No there's no confusion. I said earlier that there was a special case. I did mistake g1 for 5 and it should be 5.5. The special case is if the range of medians is two numbers then do the mean of the medians. Tell me now how that isn't fair? Even in the outrageously nerfed cases. (which would probably never occur)

tcIgnatius Wrote:No there's no confusion. I said earlier that there was a special case. I did mistake g1 for 5 and it should be 5.5. The special case is if the range of medians is two numbers then do the mean of the medians. Tell me now how that isn't fair? Even in the outrageously nerfed cases. (which would probably never occur)

He already explained it (it was my original post). Read the posts again. They've been edited.

If another 10 is added, or another 1 is added, the score changes by 5. It's absurd.

How can you not see how arbitrary that is?

And again, the scores are *not* nerfed. One wacky number is potentially biased. 10 of them is likely not.

I personally like working with outcomes, and not just hypotheticals, so I also did the scores based on the medians and used averages across all categories to break ties. Here are those results:

Overall
LaserfaceJones
Constellation
uDeadGame

Gameplay
LaserfaceJones
Constellation
ManeuvIt

Graphics
LaserfaceJones
ChasmBowling
SimoebicDysentery

Audio
LaserfaceJones
ChasmBowling
Gw0rp

Story
Gw0rp
BostonMouse
LaserfaceJones

Presentation
LaserfaceJones
Constellation
ChasmBowling

Originality
Constellation
Gw0rp
ChasmBowling

As you might be able to tell, the effect appears to be that those who are already at the top, tend to remain at the top, and the results tend to exclude lower scoring games across all categories -- thus giving them less of a chance to win [edit] like in this case it looks like SurroundedbyDeath has been excluded from the winners circle, and I don't see a new one, which leaves only eight remaining to receive prizes [/edit]. So from my own subjective viewpoint, I don't think this is a "fair" tie-breaking system. Again, I don't think there would be a "fair" tie-breaking system with median voting.